


Oh My Days

by ShowMeAHero



Series: Swing Life Away [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Aquariums, Children, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Family, Field Trip, Fluff, Fun, Humor, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: Steve and Bucky are ambushed into being chaperones on a field trip. They make the most of it.





	Oh My Days

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so fucking exhausted. I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did while I was deliriously writing it.
> 
> Title taken from ["Left Hand Free"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWUoDpo2fo) by ∆ (alt-J).

Usually, Bucky was the one who dropped Sarah off for third grade every morning, typically while Steve was still trying to wrangle the other four children into clothes for the day and high chairs for breakfast. Today, by some miracle, the two of them had all five children in the car to deliver Sarah to school before they met Clint and Kate for breakfast.

Well, ‘miracle’ might have been a loose term for it, if you asked Steve, because, as it turned out, it was no miracle that both of them ended up going. It actually might have been a curse, in fact.

“Oh, Mr. Rogers!” Sarah’s teacher, Ms. Hart, exclaimed, the moment they pulled up in front of the school. “Mr. Barnes! Thank God you’re here.”

“Uhh,” Bucky said, still helping Sarah down from the minivan. “Hi?”

“Hello,” she said, catching her breath. “All our chaperones canceled.”

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, leaning around the passenger’s side seat to see Bucky. “Is Sarah good?”

“She’s fine,” Bucky assured him, at the same time Seamus screamed in delight, reaching for the old lollipop Maggie had uncovered and was holding out to him. Steve stretched back and took it away.

“Would you two mind chaperoning the field trip today?” Ms. Hart asked. "All the other parents cancelled." Bucky looked at Steve, who looked back at Bucky hard. The two of them stared at each other for a moment; Bucky could tell from the lines of Steve’s face that he was going to cave. Steve could tell from the furrow of Bucky’s brow that he was going to cave, too.

“If we don’t,” Bucky said, “can we even call ourselves superheroes, Steven?”

Steve sighed.

“Sure,” they said at the same time.

“Can we bring the others?” Bucky asked, and Sarah groaned.

_ “Dad,” _ she said. “Can’t Auntie Kate or Uncle Thor take them or something?”

“Auntie Kate has… plans,” Steve said, “today. And Thor is… in another realm. So. No.”

“You can bring them, that’s fine,” Ms. Hart told them. “Thank you  _ so  _ much. You can park over there and come to the buses when you’re all set. Thank you, again, just- so, so,  _ so much.” _

“No problem,” Steve said, smiling. Bucky lifted Sarah from the minivan and set her and her backpack on the ground.

“Go play with your little friends, child,” Bucky said, nudging her towards the buses. “It’s time to leave the nest. Go.” She stuck her tongue out at him, shouldered her backpack, and jogged off to join her classmates. He looked in at Steve, who offered him a smile.

“You  _ love  _ kids,” Steve reminded him. Bucky snorted and got back in the passenger seat, texting Kate and Clint that they weren’t going to make it.

“Just park the damn car,” Bucky grumbled, glaring down at his phone screen. Steve was pretty sure it was just for show. Reasonably sure. Sure enough, at least.

Once Steve had Milosh on his chest in a baby carrier and Winnie on her backpack leash, and Bucky had Seamus and Maggie on their backpack leashes, plus both of their backpacks loaded up, Sarah was looking like she’d rather die than have her fathers get on the bus with her and her friends. She pretended not to see them heading over and sat in the very back of the bus when they got on.

“It’s going to be fun,” Steve whispered to Bucky as they sat on the peeling plastic seats of the school bus. Maggie and Winnie were biting each other’s nails on the floor while Seamus watched in horror and Milosh slept soundly against Steve’s chest. Bucky stared down at them like he had never met them before.

“I wish we were back in the 1940s and they could raise themselves,” Bucky replied. Steve snorted. “Maggie, get  _ off  _ of her, Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t cuss,” Winnie said. Maggie shoved at her. Seamus gasped and pointed at them, looking up at Steve incredulously.

_ “Pushed,”  _ Seamus whispered. Winnie flicked the back of his head and his mouth fell open. He pointed harder. “Daddy.  _ Flicked.” _

“Tattletale,” Maggie grumbled. Bucky reached down and flicked all three of them.

“Knock it off,” he told them. Steve flicked Bucky.

“You’re a bad example,” he said. Bucky stuck his tongue out. “That’s where Sarah gets it from, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Bucky twisted around to look at their daughter, seated in the back with her friends, Roxanne and Gary. She glared back at them, unblinking. “Jesus. That’s unsettling.” He turned back around. “She gets  _ that  _ from you.”

“What, that creepy stare? No, that’s  _ all  _ you,” Steve told him, just as a little boy came up and tugged on Bucky’s sleeve. Bucky glanced down at him incredulously.

“Are you Captain America?” the little boy asked softly, shyly.

“No, that would be him,” Bucky said, pointing to Steve. Steve waved. The boy’s nose crinkled up.

“Oh,” he said, in a normal, slightly disgusted tone before running back to his seat. It took exactly 0.2 seconds for Bucky to burst out laughing.

“Shut up,” Steve grumbled, and Seamus gasped and pointed up at him.

_ “Bad words,” _ Seamus whispered. Maggie flicked him again. Bucky tied their leashes to Steve’s wrists and moved to a different seat.

The ride to the aquarium wasn’t very long, but boy, was it noisy. Once that little boy had reported to his friends that Captain America was in the front, along with the Winter Soldier,  _ and  _ a bunch of little kids, children came up in shifts to ask them random questions. One child asked what war crimes they had committed, and whether or not they were exonerated from them. Steve just stared while Bucky explained the letter of the law as it had been explained to them by Nelson and Murdock. The kid took notes and everything.

Getting into the aquarium, in short, was a shitshow. Each child was color-coded and assigned to their similarly color-coded chaperone. Steve was pink. Bucky was orange.

“That clashes so bad,” Bucky commented. Steve shoved at him as he tried to find a place to tie his pink handkerchief. Bucky tied his orange one onto his head like a milkmaid. Steve settled for wearing his like Fred from Scooby Doo’s ascot.

As it turned out, they were the  _ only  _ two parents involved in the chaperone business. Everyone else was teachers, teachers’ aides, and one student teacher with a purple handkerchief who looked terrified. Sarah ended up in Steve’s group and looked slightly miserable about it. Steve raised his hands for sign language.

_ Let me know if I can do anything to make this easier,  _ he signed to her. She tried to roll her eyes, but ended up smiling at him.

_ Make Papa stop doing that,  _ she signed back. Steve looked over to see Bucky crouched in front of a child, explaining why, exactly, he couldn’t swim in the shark tank, and what a shark would do to him if he did. Steve sighed and turned back to Sarah.

_ God himself could not sink this ship,  _ he said, and Sarah grinned.

After the shark explanation, Bucky became an almost immediate hit. The kids were mostly interested in his arm and in his cool and fun stories that he shared with absolutely no filter at all, despite the fact that he was talking to a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds in an aquarium. Seamus and Maggie wrapped themselves around his ankles while he stood in front of the starfish tank and waxed poetic about the oranges he used to steal back in 1938 Brooklyn while small children stared at him with respect and confusion.

“Captain America is a goody-goody,” Steve heard one kid whisper to another while he was showing the pink group the octopus room. “My daddy said so. Even if he was a war criminal for a while. He still doesn’t swear or go to parties or have sleepovers or  _ anything  _ fun.”

“I bet he doesn’t even play video games,” the kid’s friend replied. They glanced at him and, seeing him looking back, immediately scattered, one of them bumping into a tank in their haste and falling ass-over-teakettle. Steve set them on their feet and showed them back to the squids.

“I could beat you and your dads at Mario Kart,” he whispered to them before standing up straight and taking Milosh and his unfocused nearly-a-month-old eyes to stare blankly at an uncurling octopus. Bucky had several kids hanging off of him and a bunch more following after him a single-file line like ducklings. He shot Steve a desperate look. Steve just shrugged.

The experience did have a few benefits, though. Maggie and Winnie seemed to share a mutual affinity for the aquatic animals and hardly fought the whole day. The two of them spent a lot of time running from tank to tank, getting tangled in each other’s backpack leashes in their haste to show each other the next cool thing and ask a teacher or parent to read them the information plaques. Steve took way too many pictures of them standing together, Seamus a little bit behind them, looking at manatees and dolphins and all sorts of stuff. He sent them all to the group chat until he was berated for flooding it, then kept sending more anyways.

Steve also actually took his job as a chaperone  _ seriously. _ He tried to help the kids learn. He kept them in line. He hushed them when they got loud and kept them from stealing things from other patrons. Bucky, meanwhile, had gone totally rogue and was letting the kids do whatever they want as long as they didn’t get caught. At least half of them were imitating Bucky exactly, like a tiny team of mirrors following him around.

_ This is so lame,  _ Sarah signed to Steve. Steve grinned at her.

_ Maybe you’ll finally be cool now that your dad is,  _ Steve signed back. Sarah stuck her tongue out again, looking absurdly like Bucky as she did so, before turning to her buddy Gary and continuing to talk about how much she loved the turtles they were looking at, and what she would have named each of them had she been their handler.

Winnie tugged on Steve’s shirt just then, and Steve glanced down at her. She looked on the edge of tears, and Steve knelt down to her.

“There’s too many people,” she whispered to him. Maggie sprinted a circle around them, Bucky chasing after her and clipping her backpack onto her again once he caught her. Winnie sighed. “There’s too much going on.” Her and Steve stared at each other for a moment while Steve rubbed her back. “Carry me?”

Steve sighed.

Soon enough, he had Winnie on his shoulders, Maggie shoved into his backpack with her head poking out, and Milosh still on his chest, blissfully well-behaved. Seamus was up on Bucky’s shoulders, and his duckling mirrors were trying to get onto each other’s shoulders to imitate him.

By the time lunch hit, everyone was exhausted and devouring pieces of their sandwiches whole. The kids’ behinds had barely hit the benches before they were scarfing down whatever their parents and guardians had packed for them. Steve felt similarly, as he laid out food for Winnie, Maggie, and Seamus while Bucky tried and mostly succeeded to feed Milosh, still strapped onto Steve’s chest and unwilling to be moved from it. Steve fed himself and Bucky cafeteria-bought chicken strips with his one free hand.

“Thank you both,” Ms. Hart said to them, looking harried as two third-graders attempted to claw her dress off for her pudding cup. “You’re lifesavers.”

“No problem,” they replied simultaneously. Steve reached out to unwrap a little girl’s microwave burrito. The meal options were decidedly non-fish-themed, which was a small blessing, Steve decided.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with various children’s programming, which each kid having an option in which programs they wanted to attend before they left the aquarium at 2:30. Sarah paid careful attention to where Steve and Bucky were assigned before choosing one far away from them. Bucky ended up with the kids half-watching him, half-watching the shark informational show. Steve ended up with a lapful of third graders and toddlers, all of them watching a guide talk about squids. The girl with the microwave burrito threw up halfway through. Steve learned little to nothing about squids.

2:30 couldn’t come nearly quickly enough, and Steve spent a lot of the time they were counting the kids up and loading them back onto the buses composing a letter to Charles Xavier, telling him how godly he was for running a school out of his goddamn home.

The bus ride back was decidedly quieter than the ride there, as most of the children fell asleep on their bus benches. Maggie was still keyed up, but Winnie and Seamus drifted off in Bucky’s lap, as did Bucky. All of them were asleep halfway through the ride, when Steve glanced at them. He turned back to look at Sarah, whose face was smushed against her window; she, too, was fast asleep, the stuffed turtle she had gotten at the gift shop. Steve settled back around and watched the bus driver flirt with the student teacher mercilessly.

Steve had to all but drag everyone off the bus once they got back to the school, making sure every child had a guardian to pick them up and vice versa, each guardian a child. He pinched Bucky awake and gave him all five children and their bags to pack into the car while Steve wrapped up with the class, which Bucky left to do with minimal drowsy grumbling. By the time Steve got to the minivan, everyone was asleep again, save Milosh, who was wide awake and blowing spit onto his own face.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, champ,” Steve said, pulling away from the school. Milosh spit again, and Steve laughed, sticking his tongue out at him.

“I told you she got it from you,” Bucky mumbled from the passenger seat, eyes barely open. Steve shushed him and reached into the back for Maggie’s shark toy.

“You go back to sleep,” Steve said, handing him the shark plush and patting him on the head. Bucky flipped him off with a metal middle finger and used the stuffed animal as a pillow against the window. Steve turned the minivan’s stereo on low, letting the soothing tunes of Disney songs wash over them as he drove them all home.

**Author's Note:**

> The working title for this was, inexplicably, "dayo (banana boat)". #behindthecurtain
> 
> I have a blog now to request imagines - I just like to make people happy. Submit requests [here!](https://imagine-in-the-fandoms.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> I also actually wrote a book. It was a long road but, I did it! Ta-da It's about two young ladies who hunt aliens and fall in love. If you want to read it, shoot me a message!
> 
> You can follow me on Twitter at [@nicoIodeon](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon) or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
